the first decades of the twentieth century and the rapid growth of Cuban radio in the 1920s were crucial to bringing son to groups who otherwise never would have been exposed to it on a regular basis. By the 1930s it had become one of the national musics of Cuba.
Son’s success in serving as an artistic bridge between black and white Cubans helps explain some of its appeal to Africans in the 1920s and 1930s. They, too, were trying to reconcile the universalist ethos of the colonial European regimes with their more locally based cultures. Just as significantly, by the 1920s son music had become a sign of modernity in avant-garde circles, first in Havana and then in Europe. Though many in the United States have regarded Afro-Cuban music as an inconsequential folkloric style, produced by marginalized Hispanic immigrants from the Caribbean, by the late 1920s increasing numbers of European listeners regarded son music as an important art form, on the same level as other distinguished types of popular music like jazz. In 1929, for example, one of the first famous son groups, Septeto Nacional, won a major prize for a performance at the Exposición Ibero-Americana in Seville, Spain. This European embracing of son music as a prestigious cultural form was not only gratifying for black Cubans. Many Africans also took pride in an Africanized modern form of cultural expression’s being equated in the colonial metropole with sophistication and advanced artistic taste.
However, the attraction of son went beyond its lofty role as a mediator between civilizations. The structure of a son piece resembled many African musical traditions, and the montuno, with its improvised call and response between a chorus and a leader, has counterparts in many types of African musical expression. The rhythms of sons also encouraged dance styles compatible with African practice. The clave encouraged the shifting of weight from one leg to another in such a way as to generate a gentle swaying of the hips. While in many African dance traditions hip movements are more accentuated, the dance styles associated with son music clearly had their origins in Africa, not Europe. Because of such shared cultural characteristics, according to the Malian/Nigerien flutist Boncana Maïga, son music provided a mirror for Africans and gave them the aesthetic jolt of hearing familiar rhythms from a new perspective.35 Hearing and dancing to this music that straddled Europe and Africa became a pleasurable way to be at home in the modern world.
On first hearing it, one would think that danzón, the fifth Cuban popular music genre, would hold little interest for African listeners. The style appears to be a by-product of the European ballroom culture: demure, dignified, and slightly formal. Although a connection with an African musical tradition is not immediately apparent, it is there. For at least three decades, starting in the 1950s, a variation of this musical form captivated the Senegalese public, who considered it a fount of sophistication. Even in the twenty-first century there is still a sizable audience for this style of music in Dakar and St.-Louis, where crowds pack the concerts given by touring ensembles, such as Cuba’s Orquesta Aragón, that still include danzones in their repertoire.
To better understand the allure of danzón for the Senegalese, it is useful to analyze the development of the form.36 A closer look reveals that danzón for much of its history has been a distinctly Africanized and Gallicized form of musical expression, as popular with black Cubans as with Iberian Cubans. Since at least the middle of the nineteenth century, African and French influences have shaped its evolution. Given the abiding impact of these influences, it is not surprising that Senegalese listeners (and other Francophone audiences in places like the Congo) have felt so comfortable with this genre. Moreover, the fact that Cubans for two centuries have associated this type of music with sociality and respectability has heightened its appeal for Senegalese. It has provided a model for forging a modernity that incorporates pleasure, civility, and embracing global cultural connections.
The origins of danzón lie in the Haitian revolution at the turn of the nineteenth century. With the dismantling of the plantation system there, a number of French planters took refuge in Cuba. They brought with them many of their slaves and their French cultural practices. Included in their cultural baggage was a dance music form, the contradanza (in the Spanish spelling). In some respects similar to US square dances, the contradanza was performed in a fast-paced 2/4 meter. The accompanying musicians often were of African ancestry and, according to Ned Sublette, gradually syncopated the European-derived music by adding such features as the tango rhythmic cell.37 The contradanza quickly found favor with well-born Ibero-Cubans. It became a fashionable leisure time activity, even though it meant that the Cuban elite began dancing in between the beat in African fashion rather than on the beat, which was more characteristic of European ballroom music.
By the 1830s Cubans had indigenized the contradanza by creating a related dance music, danza. The danza had an ABAB form and was danced by couples facing but not touching one another. It began with a paseo, a repeated 8 measure that was good for chatting or resting. A section in 2/4 followed the paseo, and a danza piece would conclude with a section in 6/8. Perhaps in recognition of the humid Cuban climate, the pace of the danza was significantly slower than the contradanza’s. By the 1880s the danza had grown into an immensely popular cultural form, the danzón, which many Cubans in the twentieth century regarded as the true national music of Cuba. The danzón has an ABACAD form (rondo) and is danced by couples, which was a daring innovation for socially conservative nineteenth-century Cuba. Traditionally, it was played at an even more majestic pace than the danza, allowing for a full evening of dancing without exhaustion.38
Originally the instrumentation for danzónes involved woodwinds, brass, and violins, with clarinets and trombones dominating. However, in the first decades of the twentieth century a different kind of orchestra, the charanga francesa, gradually became the preferred ensemble format for playing this genre of Cuban music.39 In these musical groups, led by artists such as Antonio María Romeu (1876–1955), brass instruments disappeared, with their part being taken by the violin section. The woodwinds contracted to just a couple of five-key wooden flutes, and the orchestras featured pianos for the first time.
There is some debate over why Cubans considered this new type of musical organization more French than that of other types of ensembles. The great Cuban flutist José Fajardo maintained that charangas francesas were characteristic of prerevolutionary Haiti and were brought to eastern Cuba by fleeing French planters. Others have pointed out that the addition of a piano made danzón groups more refined, with refinement being associated by Cubans with anything French. Still others have argued that the new emphasis on flutes and violins led to an elegant lightness, qualities the Cubans also connected with the French.40 All these hypotheses are equally plausible. Certainly when Senegalese listeners discovered this Cuban musical tradition after World War II, they found this music as elegant, light, and refined as had the Cubans half a century earlier, and they, too, connected these qualities, in part, with French culture.41 Moreover, they associated the prominence of pianos, flutes, and violins in this type of Cuban music with the prestige of classical music.42
The rise of son music in the 1920s posed a challenge to danzón’s popularity. Faced with diminishing audiences, the leaders of the danzón orchestras began to experiment with modernizing their nineteenth-century sound. In 1929, for example, Aniceto Díaz (1887–1964) devised the danzonete, which deemphasized such traditional rhythms as the cinquillo and added singers to what previously had been an overwhelmingly instrumental form. Most important, however, is that Díaz added a montuno in the danzón’s final section that allowed his musicians to improvise. By so doing, Díaz broke down some of the barriers separating danzón and son and prepared the way for even more important departures from tradition in the 1940s.
In 1937 the flutist Antonio Arcaño (1911–1994) formed a charanga orchestra that was destined to permanently change Cuban music. The musical advances pioneered by Arcaño’s ensemble created a more fluid and percussive sound that was especially appealing to African listeners. Arcaño’s orchestra was path-breaking in a number of respects. It allowed its players, especially its flutists, to improvise much more freely than was the custom during that period. Most of the charanga’s musicians were dark-skinned Cubans, and Arcaño made it a band policy to play frequent engagements
